[...] Just as blogs need sensible fonts, colors, layouts, and spacing to be comfortably readable, podcasts need to be listenable. And you can’t make easily listenable podcasts without at least basic equipment and production.

[...] Using suitable equipment isn’t about sounding good to audiophiles — it’s about making a podcast that sounds good enough for people to comfortably listen to without being annoyed at how bad you sound or how hard it is to understand you. So you might need to buy something — but not much. There’s better stuff out there that you might want to use at some point, but you don’t need to. You just need to be easily heard, and you need to hear what you’re putting out there.

[...] Many podcasters still refuse to do basic editing, audio adjustments, and room treatment. Someone with a basic $50 microphone who puts even a bit of effort into these will sound much better than someone with a high-end microphone who’s doing none of them.

[...] “Room treatment” only needs to mean, “Have enough soft stuff in the room so you don’t echo.”

[...] apply an EQ adjustment that rolls off the bass (and maybe some of the upper treble) and has a slight narrow reduction in or near the 1–2 kHz range, so it’s almost shaped like a very short, wide “m”. (Play with where that middle dip is — each person’s voice will have a different sweet spot for it.)

[...] Good podcast editing isn’t removing every “uh” — it’s mostly just cutting irrelevant sections out of the show entirely.

First and foremost: as a listener, I should never know that you use Skype.

[...] If you “don’t have time” (which really means “don’t want to spend the time”) to make your podcast minimally listenable, or you’re not willing to buy even the most basic, inexpensive equipment to record it acceptably, you’re not taking it seriously. You’re half-assing it. You don’t really want to be making a podcast. You probably don’t even like podcasts. Why bother? Why should listeners respect you if you don’t respect them?